Video compression is a sub-field of general data compression, and it is built on top of image compression. Video compression can be further classified into two types: Single Video Stream Compression (SVSC) and Multiple Video Streams Compression (MVSC). Multiple video streams are used to create three dimensional or selectable perspective video presentations and are used in areas such as entertainment (e.g., virtual reality games and 3D movies), education, training, multimedia presentations, communication, surveillance, televiewing with exploration, and so forth.
Raw video contains an immense amount of data. For example, a two dimensional, single HDTV raw video stream signal of 1920×1080 pixels/frame and progressive scanning at 30 frames/s contains:
      (                            1920          ×          1080          ⁢                                          ⁢          pixels                frame            ·                        30          ⁢                                          ⁢          frames                sec            ·                        3          ⁢                                          ⁢          colors                pixel            ·                        8          ⁢                                          ⁢          bits                color              )    ≈      1.5    ⁢                  ⁢    Gb    ⁢          /        ⁢    s  
However, an HDTV channel's bandwidth is only 20 Mb/s, requiring compression by a factor of approximately 75 or, equivalently, to a data rate of 0.32 bits/pixel. To achieve even lower data rate video communications, very high compression ratios are used in applications such as videophones, mobile multimedia communications, and remote sensing. Naturally, the transmission and storage of multiple raw video streams require a correspondingly increased amount of resources. Since communication and storage resources are limited and expensive, transmitting and storing raw multiple video streams is usually impractical and/or too expensive for most applications.
Therefore a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.